


Missed Opportunities

by merentha13



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:13:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merentha13/pseuds/merentha13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow up to Introspection and Insomnia</p><p>Bodie also has a sleepless night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missed Opportunities

**Author's Note:**

> _You don’t know how long I have wanted to touch your lips and hold you tight.  
>  You don’t know how long I have waited, and I was going to tell you tonight.  
> But the secret is still my own.  
> And my love for you is still unknown.  
> Alone._
> 
>  _‘till now, I always got by on my own. I never really cared until I met you._  
>  -"Alone" by Heart

White knuckles gripped the steering wheel. He watched through the windscreen as the solitary figure made its way across the road.

“Bloody independent sod!” He sighed. His plans for this evening had been so different. They definitely hadn’t involved him going home alone.

He’d invited Ray out for a meal at Ray’s favourite trattoria. Before they’d even had a chance to dress for dinner, Cowley had called them out. The job had not gone well. He and Ray had been the first ones into the flat and the first to find the bodies of the three teenagers. There was no sign of the pusher who had supplied the tainted heroin. Ray took the scene hard. Memories of his drug squad days and his hatred for pushers dropped him into a dismal mood. He was silent for the whole drive back to his own flat after the paperwork was all done.

“How about a take-away and a pint, mate? I’m starved. We did miss dinner, yeah?” He asked hoping to salvage at least a little bit of his plans for the night.

“Nah.” Ray turned him down. Without meeting his partner’s eyes, Ray had said he wanted an early night. The words echoed with painful familiarity. Paul Coogan. The inquiry. He should have gone after Ray that night instead of having a drink with Cowley. It was a missed opportunity.

He sat in the Capri and watched for the lights to come on in Ray’s flat. It would be just like the bloody bastard to sit in the dark and brood alone.

His thoughts wandered back to the Coogan affair. Ray had indulged in a bit of self imposed isolation after that fiasco. Yeah, Ray had hit the bastard and hit him hard, but Coogan had it coming. Ray convinced himself that he killed the man and took off for home. He hadn’t left Ray alone long enough for guilt to settle, but Doyle was in full brood when he got to Ray’s flat. They argued. He let Ray yell at him, hoping that venting his emotions would make his partner see sense. But Ray was really wound up.

“You know what they made of me don’t ya....well it frightens me to death, Bodie.” Large green eyes couldn’t hide the fear and pain the man was trying so hard not to show. This went much deeper than Ray’s usual guilt trips. So he tried a different approach. He rarely let his temper fly at Ray, but he needed to shake the golly out of this self-castigating sulk. He stood up and threw harsh words at his silent partner.

“I’ll leave you to wallow in your own self pity.” He stared down at the man on the settee.

Movement. “Don’t back down,” he told himself, just wait. “Let him know that I hurt too.” He knew he could never walk away from Ray.

A book flew across the room. He’d finally reached Ray. The temper showed him he’d won. He walked back and sat on the coffee table opposite his partner. They stared at each other, reading understanding and forgiveness in each other’s eyes. And then there was a smile, small to be sure, but a smile all the same. He gave Ray one of the silly grins he saved just for his partner and he knew they’d escaped disaster again.

Escapes. They certainly had their share of those. It seemed lady luck held a special fondness for the Bisto Kids. There were many ops that easily could have ended differently. He saw again an image that still haunted his nights. Ray was trapped against a brick wall, gun raised, but not firing; the villain poised to end Ray’s life. No hesitation, Bodie shot to kill. He would deal with Cowley’s “Alive, Bodie!” later. His own knees felt weak as Ray’s legs gave way and he watched the man slide slowly down the wall, eyes closed, face pale, body trembling. Ray whispered his thanks. Not wanting to deal with all the emotions thick in the air, he asked Ray, “Stoppage?” Ray managed a nod. Burying his own reactions, he complained about the quality of the weapons they were given to use. But he knew Ray had seen through the charade. Ray knew what he’d been thinking, feeling. Opportunity lost.

Another escape. This one started with him. He found himself with fifteen pounds of explosives strapped to his chest and the detonator in a madman’s hands. He ran. He wanted to protect everyone around; he wanted to protect Ray. But the dozy bastard had chased after him, and no amount of his shouting at Ray to “get away!” stopped the man. Ray tackled him and they both went down. Ray straddled him and worked at ripping open the straps holding the bomb to his chest. He kept trying to push Ray off and Ray kept denying him the opportunity to martyr himself. They both buried their fear under anger. But their luck held. Ray got the bomb free and threw it far enough away that they escaped serious injury. Again. There were no words exchanged, just a simple hand up and a quiet drive back to HQ where they sorted themselves back into their hard-man roles. They’d let another opportunity for honesty pass them by.

As lucky as he felt, not every job worked out well for them. They’d shared tears too. Halfway to unconsciousness on a hospital trolley he saw Ray’s tear streaked face cursing him for confronting a gang of blacks and taking a serious knife wound for his efforts. He cursed himself now for throwing Ray’s feelings back in his teeth by walking out of the hospital with the nurse who had taken care of him. He did not miss the exasperated but hurt look in Ray’s eyes as he and his date, arm in arm, left Ray behind.

He’d shed tears over Doyle too. He’d cried, on his own, when Ray hovered near death after the Mayli shooting. He hid his fear in anger and his need to find the person who had shattered both their lives.

It was getting chilly sitting in the car waiting. What was he waiting for anyway? Ray’s flat was still dark.

“He’s probably already asleep,” he chided himself, but he couldn’t leave. Something held him in place. It was as if he knew his partner might still need him tonight. At that thought a light came on in the upstairs flat.

“Kitchen,” he thought, as his own stomach rumbled. “So the silly sod can’t sleep. I should go up and share a cuppa.”

But just as he couldn’t leave, he couldn’t bring himself to disturb Ray either. He settled back in the car seat. Not given to deep introspection, he found himself in a strange mood. His thoughts turned back to the man unable to sleep in the flat above him.

It sometimes scared him how much faith Ray had in him. It wasn’t often that Ray opened up enough to see it. He was nearly always taken aback when the stubborn, contrary, independent, solitary being that was Raymond Doyle would let Bodie get a glimpse of how much he trusted his partner, how much he needed him, how much Bodie meant to him.

There was a walk to the car after questioning Brownie, one of Doyle’s grasses. He had been angry at the chances Ray was taking exposing himself so readily to some nutter bent on revenge. Puzzled by Ray’s non-chalant attitude, he accused Ray of being as crazy as the man stalking him.

“Yeah, and you're just going to sit here and take it like a traditional nanny goat...and then what?” He was deeply shaken by Ray’s simple response.

“You'll save me.”  
There had been no doubt in the rough voice, no question. Ray trusted him implicitly to protect him. It warmed him as much as it frightened him. In the end, Ray had been proven right. He had been able to save his partner. It had taken threats and anger and risk, but he hadn’t let Ray down.

Protection. That was another key to their relationship. He thought back to the time he’d held Ray after a particularly nasty training session with Macklin. Protecting Ray from their own? Macklin had mocked them and they stepped apart. Embarrassed, they sat down to breakfast, neither willing to address what that embrace had meant. In the car, Bodie sighed at another opportunity that had passed them by.

The protectiveness worked both ways. He saw himself crash through a window above the courts at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Gunshots rang out. Ray burst in through a door, but his gun was silent. When it was all over, Bodie remembered being livid. He took Ray to task.

“Look, a bust in like that, you're supposed to shoot from the door.... Well, then, the next time, you can be the monkey on a string and I'll be the backup!

Ray had been angry too. “And if I had fired from the door and missed, who was standing in the window?” His voice broke on the last words and the anger drained out of him.

Neither had had an answer. They had looked at each other, feelings clear, but no words to free them. Bodie had finally broken the tension with a nonchalant “Since when did you miss?”

Part of the protectiveness was not trying to open the doors that locked away their pasts. They respected each other’s privacy as voraciously as their own. He wondered if it was because they each feared losing the other if the horrible bits of their histories were revealed. But there was the night they were camped out in the hallway of the manor being used for the Parsali meet. Ray had cracked open the door and told him about his years growing up. He’d confessed to being a “right tear-away” and “cutting a kid”. They’d really talked that night. It may have been Ray’s openness that allowed them to admit to each other that they were always afraid. But the confessions stopped short of admitting their feelings for each other.

Macklin’s voice sounded in his head. “Not enough hate, too much of other.” He laughed. Even Macklin couldn’t say the word. Love. When he looked at it all now, he knew that’s what it was. He loved Ray, and he was pretty sure the feeling was returned. A feeling of contentment settled over him. He started up the Capri, feeling he could go home now. Somehow he knew Doyle would sleep now. But no. He turned the car off and got out, heading quickly up the stairs to Ray’s flat. He wasn’t going to let another opportunity pass them by.


End file.
